You've all heard them. Every jazz jam has several. They play a meandering jazz solo that goes absolutely nowhere, full of fragmented melodies or patterns over the chord changes. Usually they'll play several choruses, each more painful than the last. They are the Wandering Soloists. Do Not let this happen to you.
A good Jazz solo is like a story. It has a beginning, middle and end. It engages the listener and interacts with the rhythm section. A bad jazz solo does none of these things, and can be known to actively turn off the audience. Many of the people who say they "do not like jazz" are actually saying they do not like to listen to a meandering soloist who takes 27 choruses to say absolutely nothing at all.
So here are a few tips on how to avoid the "Meandering Soloist Syndrome".
1. Have a compositional vision in mind. Conceptualize before you play. Think about what you want your solo to say. Think about what you want the overall effect to be on your listeners. When you improvise, make a conscious effort to be a composer, not just a soloist. Composers start with an idea, or motif, and then they develop it throughout the course of the piece. When you're improvising a solo, use this same concept. Your melodic ideas are the characters in your story. As you tell your story, those characters will interact with each other and give your audience a glimpse of your musical vision. Making music is about converting your imagination into a realized musical statement - but that doesn't automatically come from nowhere at all; it needs to start with the first step which is imagining and then visualizing what your solo will say.
2. Think globally, act melodically. When you're improvising a jazz tune, there is an entire group of you improvising at once. Usually only one soloist at a time is composing the melody, but all players are responsible for all of the music that is being put out there into the ears of your listeners. There is no room for egos on the bandstand; no one person is more important than any other, and all are pulling equal weight to make the music happen. The soloist needs to also be part of the groove, and the groove needs to be part of the solo.
It's important to know all of the musical elements that are taking place all the time during the course of a piece of music, and then make sure that those elements are all being fulfilled by players on the bandstand. Think of the tune you collectively are playing as a complete work - a complete musical soundscape - and decide ahead of time exactly what elements need to be fully present at all times in order to make it musical: Things like melody, groove, harmony, dynamics or energy -- these things ALL need to be fully represented 100% of the time in order to effectively convey the music. Whether there are twenty musicians on stage or two, or even one, those components need to be fully represented at all times.
Typically in most standard jazz combo situations, there are four basic roles: pulse, percussion, harmony, and melody. In the standard lineup of bass, drums, piano, and horn, these roles are fairly standardized: the bass plays the pulse that identifies the time, the drummer plays the percussive hits that make the tune rhythmically interesting, the pianist adds the harmonic content in a percussive way that complements the drums, and the horn plays a melody over the top. But if any of those roles are changed or removed, the other players need to come together to fill the void and continue to make the tune musically complete. For example if the bass drops out, the pianist typically uses his/her left hand to cover the bass line. If the drummer drops out, the other players might adjust their style of playing to be more percussive. If the pianist drops out, someone else needs to cover the harmonic content -- and so on. This way, collectively, everyone in the group contributes to the overall music.
Players of melody instruments need to be hyper-aware of this while it's going on. During your solo, pay attention to what the bass, drums, and piano are doing. If any of the essential elements are missing (harmony, pulse, percussion, etc) then as a soloist you need to adjust your style of playing to at least imply those elements in your solo. Note that there is a difference between making sure all of the elements are represented vs overplaying. Do not overplay. If the bassist is already taking care of the pulse, no need to duplicate his efforts. If the pianist is already setting up the harmonic framework, don't step on that. Leave some space for the rhythm section to add percussive hits. But if those elements are not being covered by other players, adapt your playing to make sure that the full music is happening.
3. Play with impeccable time, all the time. As with above, the time needs to be 100% solid all of the time. You should all be feeling the collective pulse of the music together. Soloist, rhythm section, and audience should all be feeling the collective pulse together. If your solo melody is not part of the pulse that the rhythm section is laying down, it will not sound like it belongs.
You get impeccable time by practicing with a metronome. Practice scales, arpeggios, patterns, and then go through every tune you're working on with a metronome. Not an Aebersold play-along, not Band-in-a-box, but a simple Metronome. Those play-along-tools are great for ear training, they'll tell you if the lick you're playing fits over the chord changes that a typical rhythm section might play, but other than that they're fairly worthless for developing time - and they're actually detrimental if your aim is to develop a solo that doesn't meander.
Your time can further be improved by setting the metronome to 1/4 of the actual tempo, so a click happens only every 4 beats. This causes you to internalize your time and think about things like starting and ending phrases on time instead of just playing robotically to a click.
When I was an undergrad, I went out and started sitting in around the Denver scene. I'll never forget the lesson I learned from the drummer Bruno Carr. I had been practicing with the Aebersolds, I could get around Rhythm changes fairly nicely, but I really didn't know how to interact with a rhythm section yet, and my time was more ambiguous than it should've been. I was playing a melody without any regard for letting the rhythm section know I even knew where "one" was. And Bruno just stopped. One loud rimshot and he was out. I heard him lean over behind me and tell the bassist "You tell that m--f---er I'll come back in when he figures out where he's at!" Soon I was all by myself, having to be responsible for my own time, my own melody and harmony, my own form, everything. I made it through that tune, I simplified my playing and made my time-feel very deliberate to let the rhythm section know I knew where I was, and I played a melody that made sense, and then they came back in. Bruno came up to me afterwards and told me I had an open invitation to sit in with him anytime after that, which I took him up on frequently and learned a lot. But I'll never forget that first lesson...
4. Know the Tune. Know the melody (and if possible, the words). If you're sight-reading changes, it will sound like you're sight-reading when you solo. It's important to do a little homework and familiarize yourself with a tune before you try to go compose a jazz solo in front of people. And here's a tip: They're called SONGS. A lot of songs have words. Even if you're playing an instrument that requires your mouth to be actively blowing into it (hence making it impossible to sing lyrics simultaneously) you should always know the words and melody to every tune you're trying to blow a solo over. The reason why is simple: Phrasing. A song is like a poem; it has form. Think about the different types of poems you studied in literature class: there's usually a meter to it (a pulse that puts the poem into a definite rhythmic context in time) and sometimes certain words rhyme. Even poems that don't have rhyme or meter always do have a definite sense of phrasing -- and most SONGS (poems set to music) definitely do -- we can learn from that and adapt it to our playing.
And guess what: A lot of jazz standards correspond to traditional poetry forms. There are Limericks (which roughly correspond to the AAbbA (2 longer [A] phrases that rhyme with each other, followed by 2 short [b] phrases that rhyme with each other, follwed by one final [A] phrase that rhymes with the first two [A] phrases.) - go listen to the jazz standard "Doxy" for a melodic equivalent to a Limerick form. If you know the words and melody, you know the phrasing form of the song and that's the key to playing an intelligently-phrased compositionally-minded solo over the same form. Even modern tunes like Wayne Shorter's "Fee Fi Fo Fum" correspond to a logical phrasing form similar to that of a Limerick (although in the case of that tune the two [B] phrases are not shortened, but the melodies do "rhyme" with each other.)
5. Know when to say when. If you can't make sense musically in one chorus of solo, why would anyone want to hear you go on for 23 more? Guys like Michael Brecker could play fifteen million choruses and push the energy higher and higher each time. Trane could blow a 60-minute solo on "Impressions" and keep it interesting for the whole 60 minutes. You're not them. Keep your solo short, concise, and to the point, unless you really have something to say. If you (1) have something to say, (2) if you're continuing to build your ideas and develop your motifs, and (3) if you're keeping your rhythm section engaged and bringing the entire band along with you, then you can and should keep your solo going for as long as those three things are still true. But when your solo has run its course to its logical conclusion and all you're doing is meandering, it's time to "take the horn out yo mouth" and let the tune go on.
6. Dynamics! Playing a meaningful well-phrased melody with good time amounts to only 2-dimensional thinking. To play 3-dimensionally, one must add the variances of soft and loud. In the case of a jazz solo this will especially bring your playing to the next level. Manipulate the energy of your solo and vary the dynamics in a way that makes sense. Most of the time this means starting out softly and building to a fortissimo -- but it can also be effective to start out strongly, then drop down to pianissimo as you develop your motif so that you can build it back up to fortissimo by the time you finish. Bonus points if you can effectively communicate your intent to use dynamics to the other members on the bandstand. If your rhythm section is sensitive and if they're listening to what you play, they'll go loud and soft with you. But if they've already tuned you out because all you've been playing thus far is self-aggrandizing, meandering meaningless notes, then you'll need to get their attention first.
These 6 pointers are by no means the end-all-be-all of how to craft a good solo. But hopefully they are enough to help players to avoid the Meandering Soloist Syndrome, or MSS, which is a very serious condition that will eventually lead to invisibility, or at the very least, irrelevance.
Stay relevant, my friends.
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